Tuesday Science Times Two and More

I am so far behind in blogging, I may never catch up. We have had a lot of field trips lately, and I've taken a few seminars for educators, so we are never home long enough for me to sit down, edit photos and blog. I really overdid it in scheduling ourselves into insanity this month, despite my vow not to go nuts on the calendar until spring... And my back is telling me so, even more loudly than my husband! Anyway, this is my longwinded way of saying, expect catch-up posts...

To move things along, here are the last two weeks of Mad Science...
The first class was about materials analysis. There was a demo of flame testing, in which we learned that natural materials tend to burn, and synthetics tend to melt. We compared how smokey various substances were, how quickly they burned, whether they stretched, etc. Then the kids got to do absorbency and strength testing on different types of fabrics.



This week, which was the last of the series, was about codes. The kids tried ASL, learned SOS in Morse Code, played with flag signals, and got a cool code wheel to take home. And Mikro told everyone how code sticks worked in ancient Greece... Soon classes on NASA Science will be starting up. We are looking forward to them!



After class, we read at the library. Oe week we focused on history, and the next, it was time for some math:



Did you know that the ancient Egyptians sewed their boats together?



We looked at math concepts such as area, angles, symmetry, rounding by 10s, making predictions and probabilty. Mikro loves Math Start books, and I heartily endorse anything that makes math fun. We also really enjoyed doing the "homework" in It's Probably Penny.